Station Bucks

Station bucks are essential for custom metal work. Without station bucks, the metal shaping process takes much longer. The craftsmen use them as a pattern to determine where and how much to shape a flat sheet into a complex curvature sculptural form.

The Craftsmen traditionally would have to draw profiles, manually cut out, and then cut away or cut additional pieces to add to the station buck to make modifications. A full car can take hundreds of hours to make a full station buck using traditional cut and paste methods.

The D&D Classic Design Studio has a new way. We use our 3D scan data and 3D model of the designs and digitally cut our station buck. We collaborate with the craftsmen to determine what they need to best build the pieces. Hardwood blocks, Clamping holes, and additional profiles can be modeled in minutes instead of hours. The resulting design is CNC cut and assembled in a couple days and pending a design review, metal shaping can immediately commence.

If modifications to the station buck are required, we can either make them manually in the case of simple holes or sanding, or digitally modify large changes and cut out the profiles again. In one case study, the customer requested a major change to the width of the body requiring the entire body to be re-cut. We got to work and in less than 2 days we had a new station buck sitting on the frame ready for review.

This process is used on all of our major coach building projects and has allowed us to cut the development time and cost down on major modifications. We can 3D scan a fender and create a mirror station buck for the opposite side to fabricate the damaged/missing side.

We offer this service to other shops as well. Please contact Mark Kennison at info@markkennison.com or 937.473.2229 for more information.